Made by hand (09 Dec 2004)
For perhaps the first time in the history of computing, things behave exactly as they should. There is no interface gap - no character represents you, because there you are on the screen, waving your arms and moving things in front of you. No instruction manual. Just plug in and start to play. And it makes a great party game.

"It involves a very natural interface - body movement," says Gonzalo Frasca, a researcher in computer games at the IT University of Copenhagen. "So even people who have never played computer games feel they can give it a try. EyeToy did to my wife what seven years of marriage to a videogame researcher could not: get her into videogames."

The first EyeToy game, Play, came out in winter last year and was an instant success. Unusually for a computer game, it kept on selling - more than 4m at the last count. The more people played it at others' houses, the more they wanted a copy of their own. And not all were in the usual games player demographic.Article URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1369059,00.html